Distribution of couriers among
employees might seem like a simple everyday task and may even raise a
few eyebrows when we say, “We at Zoho have a dedicated application to
manage and track it”. The front office personnel have plenty to attend
to, ranging from managing cars being parked on premises to routing
incoming calls. Amidst all this, the mail and packages too had to be
delivered, which was painstaking. We thought how we could make life a
little bit easier for them. Certainly, nothing could be done about

monitoring

the
service entrance or guiding visitors around the campus. So we stuck to
what we were good at; Automating processes. Here is why this application
came about and is saving us time and effort ever since.

We
receive mail and packages everyday. Both official and personal stuff.
Sometimes the number of packages is high, making the job of identifying
the recipient and delivering it by hand, a very tough one. The mail-man
visits our office, same time everyday, to deliver the mail and take with
him, the ones awaiting dispatch. These packages would usually be at
with the front-office. The security personnel had to individually inform
each person of the package (or letter), which they would pick later.
First, the employee had to be tracked using Zoho People, our online people
management tool, and then informed over phone. This was very
time-consuming.

. The first one is to look up the employee to whom the package
is meant for, and a second one to generate an automated email
notification. When a search for an employee is done, all the matches are
returned. The personnel then selects the exact recipient. On selection,
the application proceeds to the second form. Here, employee information
such as name, identification number and email address are populated
automatically. Other details such as sender information, number of
packages waiting to be collected and which of the three security desks
it is available at, need to be filled up manually. On submission of this
form, an email containing the above information is sent to the
concerned employee.

For
booking a courier too, we couldn’t expect the sender to be present when
the mail-man stopped by. So we provided an option of leaving the
package, fully addressed, at the front-office. When the pick-up truck
pulled over, the packages would be handed over to them by the security
personnel, and the waybill tracking details would be entered in this
form along with the employee details. To distinguish between sent and
received parcels, we included a radio button as one of the fields. This
eliminated the need for a separate form.

Though
putting this application together was quite simple a task,
just of
about six hours

, the time and effort it has saved for us is notable.
That is why it found its way here. On days when mail and packages add up
to more than 200, delivering them becomes more of just an activity than
productivity. This simple yet highly capable application is all we did
to overcome the futility, and it has been serving us well for quite some
time now.